The World Moves On Our Hips

Women can do many things. In the pursuit of beauty, we will even endure baring all in front of a stranger to have the hair ripped out of our most sensitive spots. Women also have an innate desire to please those to whom they are closest. Hopefully, in this case that’s..whoever you want it to be.

“Fool” and “cruel” is of course a perfectly good rhyme, though not a brilliant one like those in women at work Down Under. Amy Schumer did a hilarious sketch on waxing in which she said (and I’m paraphrasing):

Most egregiously, one person objects to the wax on the grounds that they are really an astrophysicist from Thailand (and not a waxer), and the thought that anyone can fail to see the genius of that is enough to make you weep.

These things are, of course, subjective, which gives me the excuse to offer my interest in hairlessness; ah the exquisite agony of a wax. Like controversial yoga, it’s made me realise the extent to which Brazilians have been normalized. Those of us who choose to curate our own body hair know that the world moves on our hips. By going bald like Samson, are we losing our power?

Throughout history, a shorn head has been heavy with meaning. The bare-headed Christian or Buddhist monks told of their devotion or a renunciation of worldly pleasures. And more commonly, shaven heads have been associated with trauma, brutality and the loss of individuality or…and back to Samson, strength…just not down there.

It’s not a self inflicted madness à la Britney Spears days is it? It’s ‘clean’, it’s ‘validatory’, it’s about ‘control’. Or, is it about dystopian futures? A sign of people who are in some way untouchable, but begging to be touched? Maybe it’s only just hair. And for the most part, it grows back.

3 replies on “The World Moves On Our Hips”

Cheryl Lewis

Hair .. Such a personal preference as to length ..growth .. There or not .. Personally for me its lighter and cleaner not to have body hair .. So yay for the Brazilian .. As aunty Wendy says .. Food for thought .. Xx cherry ??